This Week In Imports: J-Horror And Marvelous Ninjas

Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson comes out this week and it’s the first game in Marvelous AQL’s popular series to include a playable male character. The series blossomed from a single 3DS game to a franchise and we’re curious to see how much of a sales boost Senran Kagura 2 will get from that. Nippon Ichi Software has a new entry in their horror game series for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Shin Hayarigami is the first game to be rated CERO Z and the first Hayarigami title for both systems.

Perhaps, most interesting is Lost Dimension. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey developer Lancarse developed this title and FuRyu is publishing it. You might remember FuRyu from their work on Unchained Blades. They’ve grown steadily since then and Lost Dimension looks like their biggest project to date.

Fingers crossed that it does very well and stays a strong franchise. More game series needs to have staying power in Japan.

CirnoTheStrongest

I’m just worries this whole split demographic might hurt the games. It should be fine because SK is such a great franchise, but it’s an odd idea to be continuously releasing the games in a split platform format.
Though, it does seem like the 3DS games have their own thing going (but not independant of the Vita games), while the Vita games do something else. Like, dual stories or something? I dunno.

British_Otaku

I thought they would be more distinct before SV came out, but they are ultimately both going for the same thing. Decent action games with strong stories and bountiful fanservice.

They have unique strengths on the different platforms aside from some artistic choices, but I think most people who own a Vita to play SV either already owned a 3DS or will get one to play SK2.

Shippoyasha

Yeah, it definitely is a kind of a funny arrangement for sure. Though it seems the series is pretty lively on both the Vita and 3DS front. It might even go to the PS4 eventually as well. I think the stories are supposed to interconnect, but yeah, it seems the Burst storyline is more enclosed into itself while the Vita one is going in another direction with all the other school factions.

-Misaki-

Shin Hayarigami looks interesting, also Lost Dimnsion is a must.

SaiyanJedi_Trunks

Both of these games have my interest. I also hope that SK 2 does well.

I really am interested to see how Lost Dimension performs on the next Media Create charts. I can’t get a read on it at all. It seems really interesting, and should have fun gameplay, but the presentation is so… modest, and the Japanese market is so poor now, it’s probably not gonna fly off of shelves or sell-through much of it’s shipment, right? I mean, we saw Natural Doctrine die earlier this year already…

I hope it does well though!

D-Omen

Whoa, Shinku’s boxart is pretty sweet! I wish Asuka got a super form on par with Crimson Homura though. ;_;

Kornelious

Asuka with her hair down is practically god-mode on it’s own! <3

British_Otaku

We need the games to acknowledge that, it would be like Shirtless Goku (famous for being the most powerful form) and Zoro with his bandana (his final form) for slight clothing adjustments which make you stronger.

Kornelious

And now we have two more games that have released to add to the “Please localize these games, and you can’t say we’re being desperate because they have already been released in Japan” list XD

fyi1191

Only waiting for Senran Kagura 2 here. Hope it does well.
There are quite some players complaining about it being back on 3DS after all.

Juan Manuel M. Suárez

Lost Dimension looks pretty good but it’s a shame it’ll be outshadowed by SK2; sex sells. If it did well on the PSV, it’ll do terrific on the 3DS~.

lel

Not even mad, lots of life and hometown are coming to the west later this year.

NeptuniasBeard

Hopefully if Crimson gets localized (which it should), then maybe we can get a limited physical release. Shinovi Vs is, I think they should keep it fair

Time to see if Senran Kagura is more than just its fanservice and anime. Shinovi Versus got by on the Vita price cut, the anime coinciding with its release and a very, very heavy dosage of fanservice.

SK2 doesn’t have any of those going for it—even the fanservice has been taken down a notch. Let’s see if people still care as much when it’s being judged on the same merits as regular games. I suspect it won’t do nearly as well.

Anontastic

…The ever-spiteful half of my mind kind of hopes it bombs, to be honest.

Beyond any feelings I have regarding oversaturation of T&A in the games to the point of obnoxia, the last thing I want is for JP game devs to start believing more fanservice is the most effective way to improve sales. We’re already kind of starting to see the effects of SK, with clothing damage popping up in a number of recent games. I would rather see such things die as short-lived trends.

darke

The problem is that if it bombs, but the original did fine, people will blame:

1) The male character somehow causing less sales due to “guys not wanting to feel gay looking at naked guys” or something equally stupid; I’ve seen morons argue the same thing with inclusion of male-stripping portraits in Akiba’s Trip.

2) That it has less fan-service then Versus/Bon Appetit.

So if it bombs, but the other Senran Kagura games (or other ‘stripping games’) do well, it’s quite likely to have the opposite effect of what you want: more fan-service and more T&A with the removal of any potentially ‘sales-damaging’ males.

@anontastic:disqus @disqus_uSQJhcMiN0:disqus Yeah, for the industry, this is a no-win situation. If SK2 doesn’t sell as well as Shinovi—and it won’t—the obvious (and correct) takeaway will be that it’s because it doesn’t have as much nudity and pandering. So you can expect them to double down on that for the next Senran Kagura title.

The question is whether or not publishers in Japan are smart enough to realize that there’s still an audience for gameplay. I think we’ve seen lots of evidence of this with other 3DS games performing very well, so publishers clearly are aware the audience is there. It’s just a matter of whether they’re willing to invest the effort it takes to capture that audience.

We’re starting to see Square do it, bit by bit. They’re returning to form, first with Bravely Default, then with Second and Final Fantasy Explorers.

darke

I think from the sales differences the thing they probably should take away, is that fanservice+action games simply sell better on the Vita because the audience for those games seems to have one; but I’m not entirely confident they will.

Between Versus/cooking and the two main titles on the 3DS they really should have the base models and code for most of things done; there’s no reason not to make the next Senran cross platform; keep your DS-only fan-base happy and get the extra sales on Vita, but who knows.

Anyway, the next one in the series should be a Neptunia-esque RPG since they stole Senran’s mechanics, the reverse is appropriate. (Plus it might give me a reason to actually buy a Senran game; though I’m tempted to grab the rhythm+cooking game, since I liked the Miku rhythm games.)

Kumiko Akimoto

How doesn’t it have as much pandering or nudity? Have you seen the customization features?

Dude, the PVs for SK2 are nowhere near as blatant as the ones for Shinovi Versus. I don’t know if it’s because YouTube cracked down on MAQL and began removing their videos, but they’ve definitely had to tone it down.

And isn’t the only video on record which was removed was the Dekamori opening?

Youtube’s arbitrary removal system which has left countless other videos which are identical left alone isn’t a good judge of whether content has crossed the line… though I’m not 100% sure whether I want you to provide SV + Dekamori promotional footage while I provide SK2 footage to deconstruct how much fanservice is “enough”.

I think the toning down has happened more in terms of costumes than the actual destruction? Destruction has always been in the games, right from SK1, but I feel as though the near full-frontal nudity hasn’t been played up as much, this time around.

If they’re doing it, they’re doing it in their NicoNico streams and stuff, but the regular PVs for the game don’t seem to be pushing it as hard as SV did. I remember in the case of SV, there was a new video nearly every other day, showing off costumes and whatnot.

At a point, they are getting diminishing returns from spotlighting certain factors especially ones that we expect to be done pretty well by default. People aren’t going to care about SK2 having less trailers on costumes as much as it letting them pair up their waifus anywhere anytime.

Of course, they would want to know that their favourite costume is in (I’ve heard we never had a Nurse costume – What?) but being able to dress any character as anyone else will distract people from it not showing up.

Much like if a Dragon Ball game had good mechanics and/or more than a handful characters from Dragon Ball’s first 16 volumes. That kind of thing will lead to people forgetting about in game transformations or level destruction which are frequent bullet points for DBZ games.

If daily costume videos with everything else couldn’t take SV to bigger numbers, even the livestreams that SK2 has won’t change the safe 70-90K I expect.

At a point, they are getting diminishing returns from spotlighting certain factors especially ones that we expect to be done pretty well by default.

That’s a good point, too. I suppose it goes back to what you said in your other comment above, about how there’s a certain threshold that they can expect at this point in time, and for the sales of this series to increase any further would probably require a little experimentation along different avenues.

Next week is certainly going to be interesting. I expect a lot of discussion and debate, haha.

Kumiko Akimoto

The PVs? They haven’t exactly changed from what I’ve seen and they defiantly haven’t turned down the fanservice considering the multiple videos on youtube of the customization features and the way the game developers play around with them.
If anything this is way more fanservicy then Shinovi Versus.
I don’t know why you thought they toned it down.

CirnoTheStrongest

Actually, might it be possible (if it doesn’t sell as well as SV), that it was because it was on the 3DS instead? I mean, looking at SK2 and looking at SV, the gameplay seems more fun in SV. The models need a little more brush-up, but that could easily be fixed in Estival. From what I’ve read from SK fans, SV was basically superior to Burst in every way (at least in the gameplay department, haven’t heard much about the story), and so a lot expected the next SK to be on Vita. The 3D does literally nothing for the series, and that’s basically all the 3DS has over the Vita. Oh, and the dual screens. But some might consider that a detractor (it sure doesn’t work well for me).

That’s definitely a possibility, in my opinion. It’s not the four-player Musou-style game that Shinovi was, it’s not on the system that the audience for fanservice games is typically drawn to, and beyond that, again, there’s no aligning of the stars this time around.

We’ve seen evidence in the past that a lot of franchises have made the transition from PlayStation to 3DS without suffering. Monster Hunter did it, Persona Q has done it, Shin Megami Tensei has done it. Back in the DS days, even Kingdom Hearts did it. But in those cases, all of those games “fit” the 3DS audience. They sell to a wide age group, and potentially benefit from the large installbase.

In the case of Senran Kagura, that isn’t really the case, is it? It doesn’t need the large installbase, it just needs the demographic that’s into cute girls and costume destruction… and the majority of that audience is on Vita, simply by proxy of the kinds of games Vita gets. So yeah, definitely a possibility in this particular scenario.

Destiny13777

Well SV had an actual Budget where as SK1 was a first year 3DS game and when Burst rolled out they used the same assets to just add in another story mode. SK2 looks to be the best game in the series so far because they actually redid everything and have an actual budget since it’s a full on franchise now. I don’t know why people would think the series would jump ship when Takaki said he’d keep the main story on 3DS and the spinoffs on “Sony Consoles” (since he never stated what EV is going to be on). As for 3D, well I’d say that plays a huge part actually, as the whole series started from Takaki wanting so see boobs in 3D, and that man loves him some 3D.

CirnoTheStrongest

I know he does, but…well, the 3D effect was pointless. Because the 3DS doesn’t do real 3D. Also because he didn’t utilize it right.

People thought it would jump ship because SV did so well, and was so much better received.

SK2 looks fun yeah, and a huge improvement over Burst, but it’s still a 2Dish brawler.

Estival Versus
Shinovi VERSUS

I think this is why people assume it will be on the Vita (or at least on a Sony console). Also, SV is a mainline title, not really a “spinoff”, so much as a “side story”.

The cooking game is more a “spinoff”.

Limbless

Wait, you want the DEPARTURE from cross-promotion and fan-service riding to ‘being judged on the same merits as regular games’ to FLOP because it encourages fan service?

Are you sure you’re thinking this all the way through?

Anontastic

Ah, sh**, good point. However, I don’t think my worst-case-scenario is completely off-base either. I guess… there is no good end? ;(

Ouch My Head Said Dionysus

Hi five. Between this, Conception and AkibaStrip, there’s been too much of this stuff from publishers I usually admire this year.

There’s a bit in DanganRonpa where Monokuma suggests that the protagonist should peep at girls in the changing room. I thought, “oh no, this is going to lead to an awkward fanservice scene ala Persona 3 or Sakura Wars”. I punched the sky when the protagonist straight up said no way.

CirnoTheStrongest

That’s because you didn’t do things in a certain way. There’s hardly “fanservice” from what I’ve heard (failed the requirements myself as well), but you can get Naegi to not say “no”.

British_Otaku

Okay. Conception and AkibaStrip. This Year.

Conception II is the only fanservice or otaku driven game that Spike Chunsoft have released in the last two years. Otherwise they made Danganronpa, 999, Attack on Titan, Fossil Fighters, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and so on. >_>

Acquire developed five games in the same year as Akiba’s Trip 2. Only one of them was like that game. If you have a problem with the fanservice games, you should be asking for the other ones because two out of a dozen games isn’t really that frequent.

I’m not a DanganRonpa player, but I don’t see why a game like that shouldn’t endulge in the possibility of a protagonist being a bit perverted. Sure, I got it, Makoto is more shy or resolute (and the writers wanted to enforce this factor) and those writers in Persona 3 or Sakura Wars wanted to either give the player options or suggest a side of the character that could exist.

The DanganRonpa universe sounds like one that could lead to you being killed for peeking on Sakura (who I only really know as that muscle girl) or others who have hidden agendas, so that may actually be a missed opportunity.

British_Otaku

If any game is going to bomb it would be the imitations and not the “origin”. Senran Kagura didn’t do well purely based on fanservice, just like Pokemon didn’t do well just because it has an overworld and a lot of critters.

Anyway, you can’t really say that all of those recent games wouldn’t be likely to have the feature anyway. Omega Quintet? An otaku game clearly down to the multiple waifu/aidoru and self insert protagonist. It wasn’t trying to be anything else.

Ikki Tousen ran with clothing damage and even had games from Tamsoft, before they developed Senran Kagura and then there are more games and media with the concept. >_>

Symbol de Au

What are you hoping this’ll prove? That people just bought them for the fanservice? Because that might be difficult to do.

Well, I’m pretty sure everyone agrees that Senran Kagura is bought primarily for the T&A. Yes, there’s a story and yes, there’s gameplay, but neither of those are how the games are marketed.

I’m just interested in seeing how much of the added success for SV came from the anime and the Vita price-drop happening the seem week as Shinovi Versus. SK2 doesn’t have that perfect aligning of stars that SV did, so this is less of an “event” release.

CirnoTheStrongest

+1 person who bought Burst entirely for the story, characters, and gameplay. The fanservice was never a reason for me to get it in the slightest. And I was not disappointed at all with the story (on the Hebijo side. Hanzou was still good, but the anime pretty much already covered everything). It was the first 3DS game I actually really enjoyed. (And the first time I was grateful I have a 3DS)

British_Otaku

The T&A is a primary part of the marketing, so this game should be just fine. It still has the gravure idol marketing, livestream marketing and crosspromotion stuff.

I suppose the star aligning of a price discount and anime won’t be happening, but is it really necessary? We have yearly articles from you guys about how the 3DS sales are slowing down despite being huge which implies that it has hit most of the potential audience.

I agree with that to an extent, but part of me wonders how many of the people that bought Shinovi went on to become dedicated fans, and how many just picked it up because the anime was out there and they wanted to try the game because it was the current thing they were into.

Of course, the one thing fanservice games have generally been good at is retention. Because the audience is relatively small, it tends to be quite dedicated. But even in that situation, this game isn’t on Vita… it’s on 3DS, where there’s more competition and the owners of the system are spoiled for choice, unlike Vita owners.

So I guess that presents another question. What happens when you put an SK game on a more mainstream system at this point, and dial back the fanservice in your marketing a little bit? Does it still sell as well? Does it sell to the same crowd or to a different audience? Does it pick up any new fans?

darke

I’m still not sure how large the set of people who purchase ‘fanservice’ games like this, that own and play a vita, but don’t have a 3DS is?

I mean it’s cheaper then a Vita and if you’ve got the disposable money to spend on one non-mobile-phone-gaming-device (and stupidly expensive games) you’ve probably also got the money for a second, cheaper one available as well.

I mean, I’d certainly have one if I didn’t have a totally rational hatred of region locking. :P

So I feel it’s quite likely that any new ‘fans’ gained on the Vita will probably carry across.

Not particularly. I don’t like or hate it. I just love watching and tracking sales and trends, and seeing how the market reacts to different things.

CirnoTheStrongest

huh? Burst already proved this in spades. I haven’t played SV so I can’t comment from my own experience, but people who have say it’s still just as amazing with the story/characters.
I’m pretty excited to see more about the Hebijo/Hanzou girls, and also to learn about all those different schools in SV~

Did it, though? I wouldn’t exactly call a sub-100k debut something to write home about. I feel like people’s expectations are so low now that they tend to make a big deal even out of sales figures that are pretty mediocre.

To me, the real test is for one of these games debut over 100k, and to do it with one of the less lewd ones. I don’t mean to tick anyone off, but Shinovi Versus is basically borderline hentai, if you put all pretences aside. There are costumes where they’re wearing nothing but a band-aid over their nipples and crotch.

We know sex sells, and beyond that, SV had all the stars aligning for its release. I think this game is the true test. How does one of these do, when they dial the fanservice back a little, and let the characters and gameplay play a bit more of a role in the marketing?

CirnoTheStrongest

I never said a thing about the fanservice nor sales. You are giving the perception that the SK games have nothing BUT fanservice to them. While they actually have quite the stories.

Bullet Girls is a game that likely only has fanservice going for it (I just know I’m gonna regret its purchase, but I can’t help but be curious about it for some reason even I don’t get…). SK is a franchise with an engaging story and characters. The original SK was kinda weak in the story department, but the Hebijo stories in Burst (and the gameplay overall) were leagues better. Which makes me believe that SV will do even better with it.

I’m not saying that it doesn’t have a story. I’m just saying the story plays no part in marketing. The marketing for SK1/Burst and Shinovi Versus was primarily T&A. The marketing for SK2, at least from what I can tell, is more along the lines of, “the T&A is still there, but we’re putting some effort into the gameplay this time around, too.”

I’m curious to see how that goes over.

CirnoTheStrongest

Ah. Well, that’s probably true. I think SV was basically being marketed by Burst. And all the other things. So they didn’t spend as much time talking about the story.

Off-topicish
But…what is this “dead game library” that is being referred to here?

I think @British_Otaku:disqus was talking about the fact that there’s far less competition on the Vita, which is why fanservice games have found a collective audience on that system? The Vita userbase seems much less picky about the quality of the games they pick up. I don’t think a lot of Vita titles would nearly sell as much on 3DS or PS3, which have the luxury of a more diverse library.

Ishaan was right about the “dead game library”, I mentioned though I also meant that the 3DS barely had options in 2011 as well as the Vita when SV and friends came with a price drop.

British_Otaku

Senran Kagura (2011) got over 60K first week.

Senran Kagura Burst (2012) got more than that and reached 100K by 2013.

I think any Senran Kagura at this point even without being SK2/SV polished will sell because they have a god tier formula for marketing before we look at the anime, a dead game library or a potential price cut.

Grab Gravure Idols get them to do live promotions (from G-Feed in 2011 to Shiori Kawana and company in August 1st 2014’s livestream), those folks that are interested in those girls may be interested in the game.

Get out tons of manga adaptations in magazines running before the game gets going. Senran Kagura had 3 manga adaptations out including Senran Kagura Spark which was honestly pretty damn good.

Cross promotion with companies with similar market bases, they had costumes from DMM.com (who now offer Ecchi manga legally for English readers in addition to their Gravure and AV library) in 2011.
It sort of puts many of the children driven “I wanna be the new Pokemon” attempts to shame short of Youkai Watch.

I don’t see how you can argue this DOESN’T have “a very, very heavy dosage of fanservice” like SV. Some people found being able to see underwear more appealing than having them naked with conspicious “No you can’t see it here, go play an H-game on a PC” lights or stickers. We have tons of costume options and can pose two characters in any situation of our choosing, including having any of the characters on our bed instead of a body pillow. >_>

I think any Senran Kagura at this point even without being SK2/SV polished will sell because they have a god tier formula for marketing before we look at the anime, a dead game library or a potential price cut.

That’s a really good point. They do have a solid marketing formula in place, and one that will likely work on most games in the series, provided they don’t try anything overly experimental in terms of genre.

That said, while SK has been around as an actual “brand” for well over a year now, it’s not quite the same as the point where the anime was being aired. I suspect that might have been the series’ high point, at least until the next anime (probably based on SK2?) comes around.

Regarding the fanservice, I guess what I meant was that Shinovi Versus is just more blatant. For example, in the case of SK2, Takaki is talking up things like the cooperative attacks, the Tag Team mode, the improvements over SK1/Burst. I don’t know how polished the game will end up being in the end, but the message certainly has been that they’ve put a lot more effort into this one, in terms of cleaning it up.

Meanwhile, in the case of Shinovi, the message was largely boobs/ass/costumes. Yes, there was the online multiplayer and the fact that they introduced a number of new characters, but all of those features took a backseat to the videos of the costume destruction. I mean, there was a point where we actually had a discussion among our staff about whether we should keep covering it or not, just because some of the PVs were going waaay overboard.

British_Otaku

Yeah, as far as immediate awareness. I agree that when Senran Kagura’s anime aired that was a high point just like Youkai Watch’s anime came around.

Still this isn’t mainstream enough for that sort of marketing to have a significant effect which is why having an anime, price drop and all didn’t double the sales but kept the focus on the game up especially with SV DLC coming with the Bluray sets.

Senran Kagura 2’s anime will probably bring the numbers up to a new level again, but mostly if it manages to reach a bigger audience (not likely) and is combined with other smart moves.

I do wonder what it would take for this franchise to reach more people. A role-playing game, perhaps? I’m not certain how that would work, though, since the appeal for the fanservice audience seems to be the “immediacy” an action game has. But if they want to push the characters and story-telling further, an RPG could be an interesting format to experiment with.

British_Otaku

A role playing game could definitely work for the story, the possibility of a win/lose state (so the clothes concept could stick around) on top of being easy to tie in lots of teams and costumes.

It sounds like the type of game where you could recruit 151 girls established so far and tie the world together in a fun way.

Immediacy isn’t as important as a fine library of characters and costumes to this audience and if the game had all of the characters they loved from New Wave (which would be hard to design individual long stories for with full movesets), it could really help.

Dekamori didn’t do the series much of a favour, but it did show that they know how to translate the characters and story into another focus while definitely being an SK.

I remember that article! And looking at it again, it really looks fantastic. Surprised there hasn’t been much talk about it, since there’s such a need for more good horror games.

Ouch My Head Said Dionysus

This instalment looks like it has more going for it–IIRC the older PS2 games were quite a passive experience, ala Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi or Kamaitachi No Yoru: straight-up visual novels. I’m all for that, but the new Liar’s Art system seems to give this an edge. I hope we see it!

CirnoTheStrongest

The problem is that there have been A LOT of Hayarigami games, and not a single one has been localized. So, people are not as in the know about it, and the people who do know just don’t have any hope left for it to be localized.

I see petitions for stuff like the Digimon game, which makes sense to attempt since there’s actually a fanbase for that–but I wonder if there’s anything that could be done about Shin Hayarigami. Should we all go to NISA’s forum and say please, pretty please, localize me a Halloween horror spooktacular? It seems like this particular game is a good point to jump in for newcomers to the franchise.